Part 2: How will you make an impact at Michigan Ross?

Michigan Ross is proud to support a community of leaders and impact makers. As a future member of this community, we want to know more about who you are and what drives you. Please choose 1 of the following prompts to tell us more about what makes you stand out beyond your academic and work experience. List the prompt you are answering at the top of your response. (200 words) 

• What makes you unique? 
• Can you provide a specific example of how you've overcome a personal challenge? 
• What makes you excited to get up each morning? 
• Describe a time when you made a difference in your community or with an individual. 

Let’s go through each one.

[1] What makes you unique? 

There are three reactions a great response will elicit here, and two of them are very sneaky:

1. Reaction 1: That *is* unique!
2. Reaction 2: That makes me want to get to know you *more* than I did before I learned that!
3. Reaction 3: The fact that you chose to tell me that, says something about you.

Most applicants will find some semi interesting trait or background circumstance that they hope will ‘impress’ the audience, but won’t really dig deep enough. As an exercise, list out some things that seem like they may be decent options and then stress test them by seeing if they satisfy all three of those criteria. The inherent challenge is that the best judge of your uniqueness isn’t you but ‘everyone else.’ In fact, you can use that. Have others given you clues about what makes you unique?

Now, when you’ve locked into your unique feature(s), it’s time to convey it compellingly.

1. One way to maximize your effectiveness here is to set your audience up for an ‘expected direction,’ and then twist it. This does two things at once: it helps the ‘surprise’ element by forcing the audience to need to grapple with the new information, increasing the chances of it registering as ‘unique.’ (150-175 words)
2. You should also glancingly explain what this implies about you, and/or why this is cool/interesting, without hitting it so squarely on the head that it counteracts the entire effort. This takes *finesse*! So be careful. You want to help the audience along by making this unique fact not be… frivolous and a waste of everyone’s time. But also, if you’re too aware of its importance, it kinda kills it in the other direction. This one’s hard to provide specific guidance for because there’s so much ‘feel’ involved. (25-50 words)

[2] Can you provide a specific example of how you've overcome a personal challenge? 

Great one to consider. To begin, appreciate the difference between a ‘challenge’ and a ‘personal’ challenge. This isn’t about a time you succeeded against steep odds. Instead, it’s about a time when you had to look inward, and do something that required some kind of internal struggle, where the ‘complicating’ factor was self-generated. Where you were getting in your own way, somehow. 

Let’s break this down:

• Bring us into a situation that required some kind of solving/resolution. What needed doing, what were the stakes, and now, what were the ‘universal’ challenges? That is, the challenges that anyone attempting to solve this problem would encounter? (50-75 words)
• And now, what was the unique additional challenge that only you had to deal with? The personal one specific to you? (25-50 words)
• Explain how you dug deep to overcome this personal obstacle. It couldn’t have been easy, otherwise it’s not much of a notable story here. (75-100 words)
• Now explain how the ‘overcoming’ has made you better somehow. How has your world gotten bigger? How has your ability to lead improved? (25 words)

[3] What makes you excited to get up each morning? 

Great, great, great option. And honestly? It’s kind of a great exercise to go through… as a useful tool to for……. navigating life itself. If you can dig deep enough to understand what ‘gets you up in the morning,’ you may hack your own mainframe and understand what truly makes you tick. Once you do that, everything can change. So, hard recommend on attempting this one, even if you don’t end up writing about it!

What do they mean by this question? What are they looking for? Think about what it means to ‘use the right tool for the job.’ The idea is: If you understand the design of an instrument, and apply it smartly to ‘the thing it was designed to do,’ your chances of success at that task are… much better than if you didn’t understand any of that, used all types of tools, including ones that weren’t meant for that job. When you understand ‘your design’ and then set out to achieve things ‘for which you were designed’ your chances of success are high. Now here’s the twist: 

[Stay with us, this is going to get dense and philosophical…]

Whatever gets you up in the morning, is something that satisfies something deep within you. Getting up in the morning, of course, is a metaphor for ‘propels you forward’ or ‘makes your passion center glow with anticipation.’ This can be elusive. We can have a sense of what this is, but oftentimes we’ll get stuck on superficial markers. 

Example: I love doing home improvement projects! (superficial, surface)

Deeper Level Insight: I love solving problems using my own intuition and my own hands (i.e., faculties).

Whereas the first superficial example may be ‘true,’ it doesn’t capture the deeper layer of insight. If you can get to that deeper layer, that’s when the magic happens. If you understand that you’re attracted to solving problems, its applications become limitless.

So try this out: List things that excite you, make you buzz, things you’d do and not care about getting paid for it (that’s a great tire kick test). Then try to dig as deep as you can to find the ‘root-level’ feature, to the point where you can go any deeper.

Once you find that root-level insight, now you can begin writing:

1. You can either start with (a) an example of the thing, or (b) the root-level, scalable version, choice is yours.
2. Whichever you start with, then follow-up with the other one. For example:
   1. Option 1: Start with Root-Level description, follow up with Specific Example
   2. Option 2: Start with Specific Example, follow up with Root-Level restatement 
3. What does this realization mean for your future? How does it inform what ideas you’ll pursue? How does it inform the approach you’ll take? If you’ve really engaged with the ‘digging deep’ exercise, you should start to see the wild implications of developing clarity around this insight!

[4] Describe a time when you made a difference in your community or with an individual. 

Tough one because the purest version of making a difference is when you’re not actually aware of it, but the other guy is. It often undermines the whole thing if you’re conscious of the impact you’re having… not loving this question. But let’s see what they’re going for and get around it.

Rather than throw the spotlight on how important you are on the ‘delivering impact’ side, one way to pull this off without seeming conceited or disingenuous is to focus on being attuned to the needs OF the community or individual. Your sensing an opportunity TO have an impact is the key here. When you find a potential story to draw from, take us through the manner in which you saw an opportunity. What was it that altered you TO that opportunity? What did you notice? Why did you care? Why was intervening meaningful to you? What was it you were hoping to achieve? To what end?

That’ll get you out of trouble:

1. Take us into the ‘situation’ that - if unattended - would have ended up one way. But ‘that way’ was suboptimal to you, because you could imagine a better outcome. Walk us through these thoughts. Why weren’t others intervening? Did they not notice? Did they not care? Did they notice and care but not have the right tools to problem solve and execute?
2. What then did you do? How did you develop your plan? How did a careful understanding of the community or individual inform the specific way in which you developed your approach?
3. What was the result? Finish this with a word about that ‘detection’ instinct you have and why it’s an important part of who you are.

These walkthroughs for all four responses should get you to decent first drafts! Generally, we’d recommend tackling 2-4 and avoiding 1, but… it’s case-dependent, as always.

What is your short-term career goal, and how will Ross help you achieve it? (200 words)

If you’ve read our analyses elsewhere you’ll come upon this idea of ‘this has to make so much sense, it all seems inevitable.’ You know that thing where when you explain something the person listening to you just starts nodding, whether or not they agree with you? Because it’s so preposterously logical, it taps into our lizard brains and we just start nodding? This is important because if you have thought about your goals so carefully that you’ve figured out the best possible way to make it happen, it says something important about your likelihood to succeed at not only this plan, but any plan. Take home point: it’s less about how cool your goals are and more about how much sense your plan is to make it happen.

Whatever you choose as your ‘end point’ for this question (could be a quick glimpse into your long-term vision just to frame it all, or you may simply focus on your ST goals), there must be a reason FOR that goal. Meaning, to succeed at that goal will impact something or someone. What is it? This is the ‘why should anyone care’ piece which is essential. We need to see what the potential impact is FOR your goals, so that we can care about any aspect of your plans to achieve them. 

Once that’s locked in, now it’s a simple game of working backwards to show how each piece of the plan advances you toward that ultimate aim. It’s best when your plan implies that you’ve considered alternative pathways but chosen *this* one because of reasons XYZ. We want to get a sense not just that you have a plan, but that you’ve explored all possibilities and have chosen the *best* plan. This implies problem-solving, will, follow-through potential, etc.

1. What is it you’re hoping to do in the short-term, and what’s the purpose of this, what’s the potential impact? Who or what benefits? (25-50 words)
2. What’s required to pull this off? What skills and experiences? We need to establish a frame of things you’ll need but may not have today. (25-50 words)
3. Now take us through the precise way a Ross MBA equips you with new skills to position you to pursue your immediate, post-MBA goals. (25-75 words)
4. Finally, walk us through those immediate, post-MBA years, and explain what you’re hoping to acquire in the way of skills and experiences, and how doing so helps you achieve your objectives for this period of your career. (50-100 words)

Check out our analysis for Optional Essays for MBA applications here!